All That We See Or Seem
by Solstice Zero
Summary: The first time Ianto heard the singing, he was dreaming. Now Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:** This story has cut itself neatly into three parts - but with me, you never know, could turn out to be five. For now, it is planned out as having three chapters. The next two might be a lot longer, I'm not certain how the writing will turn out just yet. We'll see. This is based off of a diary entry from 1952 that was on the Torchwood website. If you'd like to read it, you can find it at _community (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) iantos_desktop (slash) 1082 (dot) h t m l. _Sorry for the crazy format, but you know how it is. Chapters should be on a one-per-day basis, to be finished on Wednesday. Ianto's birthday! It's incredibly sad that I know that. Enjoy._

"All that we see or seem  
Is but a dream within a dream."  
**- Edgar Allan Poe**

_

* * *

  
_

The first time Ianto heard the singing, he was dreaming.

It was something about a church. His father. Stained glass windows casting red, yellow, blue light onto wooden pews. Holding his hand out to touch it, to feel the colored light. Feeling its weight. Then pulling his hand away to find the colors still there, staining his fingers, staining his palm. Red, yellow, blue. And the singing.

He woke up to complete darkness. There was nothing, no glow of a clock radio, no diluted trickle of a streetlight through the blinds. Just the pleasant closeness of walls and a warm body next to him. Jack's quarters, then.

_Singing_.

He could still hear it.

He pushed the blankets away as carefully as he could, waiting for any sign of Jack stirring. When he felt nothing, Ianto swung one leg and then the other to the floor and stood slowly, watching the vague form in the darkness that was slowly becoming Jack's sleeping body as his eyes adjusted. He didn't wake.

Ianto padded to the ladder – barefoot, in pyjama bottoms – and swung himself up into Jack's office. It was louder, there. Voices, singing. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

He jumped when the he crossed the threshold of Jack's office and the low-lights of the hub came on, casting a thousand more shadows than the darkness had allowed. Myfanwy gave a short cry at being disturbed.

Ianto spoke under his breath. "Hush."

He followed the voices through the hub, finding the sound where it got stronger. It swelled and softened, like a kids' game, when he got closer or further away. It led him back through the archives, rows and rows of stored alien technology. There, the sound bounced from wall to stone wall as though there were a hidden choir in the narrow hallways. Then, he found it.

The storage container was small, and when he pulled it out and opened it the singing got exponentially louder, a wave of sound that passed through his whole body and seemed to vibrate him. He took it out.

It was the size of a small stone, fitting easily into his palm. It was smooth, as though it were made out of glass, and swirled with color. Like a marble, he thought. It seemed to be changing shape in his hands. He stared down at it. And he remembered.

_(shame but also glee at getting away with it his pockets stuffed walking out of the store but then a hand on his arm and it's the police oh god he's caught)_

He dropped it back into the container, shocked. What was that? A memory? Yes; caught shoplifting. Sixteen, was he? Such an idiot then.

What was this?

He carried it with him, back out into the hub. The lights were still on; Jack was standing outside of his office, looking confused.

"Where'd you go?" he asked when Ianto came into view.

Ianto held up the container and rattled the thing inside. "I heard this, singing." He handed it over. "Do you know what it is?"

Jack picked the stone up and looked at it closely, turning it this way and that in his hand. "No. Haven't seen it before." He paused. "You said it was singing?"

Ianto nodded. "And it made me-" He cut off. Jack looked at him.

"What?"

"It made me remember something."

Jack's brows furrowed. "What was it?"

"Shoplifting," Ianto said, looking at the stone in Jack's hand. "When I was sixteen. I was caught shoplifting."

Jack smirked. "I remember. It was in your file."

Ianto shook his head. "But why would it make me remember that?"

"I don't know," Jack held it back out to him. "Maybe it didn't. Maybe there isn't a connection."

Ianto shrugged, "It felt so real, though." He took the stone back.

He gasped.

_(lying on the ground screaming dad hovering over him "you should have told me to stop, you should have told me-" so much PAIN)_

Jack was holding him upright, taking the stone out of his hand and putting it on the desk next to them. Ianto was breathing hard; he put a hand on Jack's shoulder to steady himself, his eyes wide and unfocused.

"Ianto? What was it? What did you see?"

Ianto shook his head, his breath still coming short. "It was – nothing -" He stepped away, running a hand through his hair. "It was nothing. I'm fine." He looked at the stone. "I'm fine."

Jack's concerned expression grew grim. "What did you see, Ianto?"

"Nothing." Ianto said this with finality, looking at Jack's face. "It's fine. I'll put it back. Go to bed."

Jack looked like he was about to say something, but Ianto was turning, grabbing the container off of the desk and walking back towards the archives.

Jack was already asleep when Ianto returned. Soon, he slept, as well.

- - -

Gwen arrived that morning with dark circles under her eyes, dragging her feet through the entrance gate. Ianto was already handing her a coffee as he greeted her.

"Oh, _thank you_. You're a lifesaver," she said, holding the mug up to her lips. "I've hardly slept."

"I can see," he said, taking in the haggard way she held herself.

"Thanks for that." She glowered at him.

He smiled a bit. "Sorry."

She shook her head, taking a sip. "Rhys and I had a fight last night. It's all right now, just – that man can go for hours. About hardly anything." She sank into a chair. "I think he just likes to keep me up."

Ianto started to turn away, but Gwen stopped him, sounding concerned. "You don't look like you've slept much, either. You all right?"

He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "I'm fine."

She smirked. "Jack keeping you awake?"

Ianto rolled his eyes and left.

- - -

That afternoon, he heard it again.

It hummed underneath of everything.

He was cleaning the coffee maker when it came back. He could feel it at the base of his skull, like a single nerve firing endlessly. The cups drying on a towel beside him clinked together and rang like bells in time with the singing. He stepped away, surprised, and knocked a rack of dishes so that they, too, sang.

Gwen looked over her shoulder at the noise. "Ianto? You okay?"

He looked at her. "Do you hear that?"

Her eyebrows narrowed; she looked at him quizzically. "Hear what?"

He stared for a second, then shook his head, returning to the coffee maker. "Nevermind."

Gwen let her eyes linger on him for a second, then turned back to her work.

It didn't stop.

He could hear it everywhere. In the conference room with Gwen and Jack, under everything they said. During lunch. When they went out to capture a Weevil, he could hear it through the Bluetooth in his ear.

He ignored it. Tried to.

But it called to him. It wanted him to hold the stone. He wouldn't. Not again. He'd rather hear the singing forever than feel those memories again.

Jack sat on the edge of Ianto's desk at the end of the day and grinned down at him. "Are you staying here tonight?"

Ianto looked up at him. "I thought I'd go home."

Jack studied his face for a moment; his eyes were a trifle too wide, his breath a little shallow. "You okay, Ianto?"

Ianto shook his head. "I just need – to go home. I'll be fine." He smiled. It was painfully forced. "Tomorrow. I'll be fine."

Jack frowned. "Do you want me to come home with you?"

Ianto really did smile a little bit this time. He shook his head again, slowly. "No. Thank you, though."

Jack looked a little relieved at the smile. "All right. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Ianto stood up, nodded, then left.

Outside, in the Plass, in the dark and the cold, Ianto could still hear the singing.

- - -

He didn't make himself dinner. There was nothing in. He was too tired. He shrugged out of his jacket, his waistcoat, pulled off his tie, began to unbutton his shirt.

He would just go to sleep. That was all.

Maybe in the morning it would be gone. If not, he'd tell Jack. They'd stop it. It would be all right.

He fell into bed in his boxers and was asleep in seconds.

- - -

Sand under his feet. The sound of waves. Gulls. Storm clouds approaching from over the sea. Wind swept his coat, his hair, his eyes closing against the grit. He was singing. Standing on the beach, staring out at the sea, singing.

It began to rain.

He was in a building. Someone was throwing things against the wall in the next room; the sound of broken glass ringing on the floor. Someone crying in a corner. It was dark, but there were shadows on the wall made by the fires raging outside. He could smell the smoke. He could hear people shouting, screaming, fighting.

He could smell chips frying.

More confused images; a broken gramophone, a building burning, a man slumped against a brick wall, a dog with two broken back legs dragging itself across the ground, a raised knife, someone's terrified face.

He woke up standing half-naked in the archives, tears streaming down his face, staring down at the stone in his hands.

And he remembered.

_(hands on her throat listening to her scream pushing her against the wall watching her eyes widen watching her scramble at his gloved hands watching her face watching it slacken watching her die with the rain on his back in his eyes in her eyes glazed eyes dead eyes)_

He dropped the stone. He ran.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note: **__You know that a writing session is going to be fun when the first question you ask yourself on sitting down to it is, "So, what song would I want to strangle someone to?" (I write to music that gets me in the right headspace.) On another note, if I don't stop writing these tense stories I'm going to give myself a heart-attack.  
(And yes, 'The Depressor' is the thing's real name. Go look it up if you don't believe me.)_

_

* * *

  
_

Jack woke to the sound of someone breathing-screaming in his ear and reacted before he knew what he was doing, throwing the person who was crouched over him in his bed up against the wall.

It was Ianto. He looked terrified; his eyes were red and wet, his face streaked with tears, mouth pulled into an expression of uncontrollable agony. Jack stepped back in shock, then grabbed Ianto by the shoulders when he began to fall, holding him up. "Ianto! What is it? What's wrong?"

Ianto tried to knock Jack's hands away, sobbing, "You have to put me in the vaults. Lock me up. _Please_, Jack!"

"What are you talking about?" Jack had to grip Ianto's shoulders tightly against his struggling.

"I killed three girls!" Ianto stopped moving for a moment; stood perfectly still, staring into Jack's face, his eyes huge and round, reflecting all of the light in the tiny room. "Oh God, Jack. I killed them," his eyes unfocused, his voice a whimper, "I murdered them. I strangled them." His face crumbled into fresh tears. "I'm a _monster!"_ This last almost a scream.

Jack pulled Ianto against him. "You are _not_ a monster. Calm down. We'll figure this out."

Ianto pushed himself away from Jack and fell to the floor, scrambled away on hands and knees, horrible keening sobs ringing through the little room, completely out of control. He sat against a wall and stared with his huge eyes at the floor. "The stone made me remember. I woke up in the archives with the stone in my hands, and I remembered it. I remembered the screaming, my h-hands on-" He broke off, couldn't finish the thought. "Oh God, it's ruined, it's all ruined." He put his face in his hands, pulling air into his lungs like screaming in reverse.

Jack kneeled in front of him, his eyes adjusted enough to the dark to take a good look at him. Ianto had sleep-walked to the hub in torn jeans and bare feet. He put a hand on Ianto's knee. "Ianto." He didn't look up, just kept sobbing into his hands. "Ianto. Look at me." He looked up. Red-rimmed eyes. Lips quivering.

"You aren't a murderer." Jack said this as though it were the truest thing ever to cross his lips. It might have been. "I know that you aren't a murderer. Whatever the stone made you remember, it isn't true."

"It's so real," quiet and high-pitched, something frantic underneath of the words. "I can feel – everything. It happened."

Jack shook his head. "I don't believe it."

He went to move away, but Ianto grabbed his hand. He looked up at Jack's face with his terrified eyes.

"Please, Jack," he whispered. "Lock me in the cells. I'm – dangerous." He paused. "I don't want to hurt anyone else." Followed by a heartbreaking sob.

Jack looked down at him. Ianto stared back, his hand squeezing Jack's in the dark. Jack sighed and gently helped him up. "Come on. It's all right."

- - -

Jack called Gwen while leaning against the door to the vaults. She answered with a mumble and Jack could almost see her leaning over the edge of her bed with her hair in her face, after digging around in her cast-off jeans for her cell phone. He smiled a little in spite of himself.

"Gwen, come to the hub. We have a problem."

"What is it?"

"Just come."

She sighed. "Coming. Make sure Ianto has the coffee ready."

Jack winced. Quieter, "Just come."

Gwen was silent for a moment.

"I'm on my way."

She hung up.

Jack leaned his head back against the metal door of the vaults and let out a breath. Then he pushed himself away and went out into the hub to wait.

- - -

She arrived fifteen minutes later, wearing the same clothes as the day before and looking a little bit out of breath. She found Jack sitting at the conference table, staring up at the LCD screen hanging on the wall.

"Jack, what-" She was cut off, distracted by what was on the screen. She approached it slowly, unbelieving. Her voice was hushed, a whisper. "What's he doing?"

"Crying." Jack spoke as though it were difficult to edge the word past his lips. "He's crying."

Gwen's fingers brushed the figure of Ianto up on the square of CCTV footage, curled against a cell wall with his head against his knees, wearing one of Jack's white shirts. She looked back at Jack. "Why is he in there?"

"Yesterday, he woke up to something singing. He followed it into the archives and found an old artefact." He waved Gwen into a seat. "It looked like a stone, and it was singing to him. When he touched it, he remembered something from his childhood. He brought it out to show me, and when I touched it I didn't feel or hear anything. When I handed it back to him, he remembered something else." Jack's eyes were far away.

"It spooked him. He wouldn't tell me what it was. He told me to go back to bed and returned it to the archives." He shook his head. "I knew there was something bothering him yesterday. He looked so far away." He saw Gwen give a small nod; she probably didn't even realize she had done it. "I should have pushed him to tell me. An hour ago he woke up in the archives holding the stone after walking in his sleep through half of Cardiff in the cold, and it made him remember-" He shook his head.

"What, Jack?" Gwen reached across the table and put her hand on his. "What did he remember?"

Jack looked at her. "Murders. He remembers killing three women."

Gwen sat back, shocked. "What?"

Jack looked away. "He couldn't have. I checked. There were no homicides reported on the nights he says he killed them." Jack was remembering the questioning; bandaging Ianto's torn feet in the medical bay while Ianto told him everything, every feeling he experienced, every detail of those nights. Helping Ianto walk to the vaults. The relief on his face when the cell sealed itself closed.

Gwen said quietly, "It's his job, though. Dumping bodies. If anyone knows how to hide a body-" She trailed off.

Jack nodded. "I know. And he doesn't remember dumping them." He locked his eyes on hers. "But he didn't do it, Gwen. He couldn't have." He looked to the screen. "Look at him."

Gwen did. He hadn't moved. Curled in a tight ball on the floor of his cell. She looked away. "I know."

Jack ran a hand down his face. "We have to figure out what that stone is. Why it's making him remember these things. If it's possible that it planted that memory in Ianto's mind."

Gwen stood up. "I'll do it."

Jack looked at her for a moment, then took a pad and pencil out of his pocket and scribbled something down. He ripped it off and held it out to her. "That's the artefact's call number. Find out what it is." He held on to the paper as she tried to take it. He met her eyes. "Don't touch it. If it starts to sing, come and find me." She nodded. He let go and stood up.

"Where will you be?"

He looked once more at the screen. "I'm going to go and talk to him. He's calmed down a little more. Maybe we can make sense of this." Gwen reached out for his arm and squeezed, giving him a strained, closed-lipped smile.

"It's going to be fine," she said.

Jack nodded and left.

- - -

Ianto was sitting upright when Jack returned to him, back against a corner of the cell. He had his arms around his knees and was staring down at them with half-lidded eyes. He looked exhausted. But he'd stopped crying.

Jack leaned against the wall outside of the cell, peering in. "How are you feeling?"

"My feet hurt," Ianto mumbled down at his knees.

"Do you want any painkillers?"

Ianto shook his head.

Jack just looked at him. He didn't know what to ask. What to say.

Ianto started for him.

"There are two memories. Two sets of memories. For the nights I killed them. One set is the murders." He looked up at Jack. "The other is you. Being with you."

Jack's brow furrowed. "Which one feels more real?"

Ianto shook his head. "I can remember the details of both. But the murders-" He took a breath to control his voice. "They're stronger. More vivid."

Jack put his hand against the clear cell door. "I can't remember," he said quietly. "Whether I was with you those nights or not. I can't remember."

Ianto spoke almost without inflection, in a horrible, self-hating monotone. "Why would you? Hundreds of years old, so many things have happened to you. Why would you remember three insignificant nights?"

Jack rested his forehead against the cell door and let out a breath that condensed on the glass. "I'm sorry."

Ianto shook his head, not looking up at him. "It isn't your fault."

Jack was quiet for a moment, looking in at him. Taking in the way that his body sagged against the wall. He looked totally defeated. "The second time," Jack said suddenly, "when you held the stone the second time. What was that memory?"

Ianto thought.

"It was my dad. When I was a kid. My dad broke my leg in a playground near our house. It was an accident, but-" He didn't finish.

Jack didn't push him.

"Gwen's looking at the stone. Finding out what it is. I told her to call me if it started to sing."

Ianto looked off into the distance. "Hate it when they sing."

Jack's eyebrows rose. "What did you say?"

Ianto looked at him. "It's been in my head. Bouncing around. 'Hate it when they sing.'"

Jack's eyes went wide and he stood up straight. "I'll be back," he said, then he ran out of the vaults.

Ianto looked back at his knees.

- - -

Gwen jumped when Jack appeared next to her. She was examining the stone – as closely as she could without touching it.

"It's-" she started, but Jack cut her off.

"The Depressor," he said, and handed her a leatherbound diary. "Obtained in 1952 by a Doctor Fletcher. Torchwood operative."

Gwen took the book and flipped through it. "This is his diary?"

"_Her_ diary. She describes the effects of the stone on her, then the team, then the whole city. That thing caused riots."

Gwen was nodding. "That's what the file said. After they stopped it, they filed it away under that stupid name and didn't touch it again. How did you find the diary?"

"Ianto said something that made me remember. 'Hate it when they sing.' It's what someone in the diary entries about the Depressor said. He must have picked it up from the stone." Jack pulled a chair over and sat. "It's a message. Like sending a letter home, but just using emotions. They guessed that it was sent by someone who had seen war. It had the greatest affect on people who had been hurt in battle." He looked at her. "How does it make you feel?"

Gwen peered down at the stone on the lit table. She sighed. "Sad. It makes me think of all the times that Rhys and I have fought. And my Nan dying." She was quiet for a moment, looking at it, frowning. Then she shook her head and sat back from it. "How about you? Do you feel anything?"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing." Carefully, slowly, he reached over and picked it up. He held it in his open palm. Nothing happened. "It doesn't make me feel anything."

Gwen was looking at him thoughtfully. He looked back at her, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"Maybe," she said slowly, "maybe you've lived such a long time with your bad memories that you've managed to trap them. Remember them, but not relive them." She looked down at the table. "It is reliving. Not remembering. I can feel exactly the way I've felt fighting with Rhys, and I can remember the – the feeling of the skirt I was wearing – when we buried my Nan-" She shook her head and exhaled shakily. "And Ianto isn't just remembering. He's feeling it again."

Jack sat silently, the stone in his palm. Then he dropped it on the table and stood up. "I'll be right back."

He can back a few minutes later hefting a large black case. He set it on the table and opened the lid. "This case is supposed to contain rift energy. It should be able to contain the low-level field that this thing is throwing." He dropped the stone into the case and closed the lid. Immediately, Gwen's face cleared. She blinked.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, blinking again. "Sorry, yeah. It's gone. The feeling." She looked at the case. "It worked."

Jack nodded, then reached over and toggled the screen of one of the workstation monitors to show the CCTV footage from the vaults. Ianto was still in the corner, still hugging his knees. He hadn't moved at all.

Gwen pressed a button that would transmit her voice into the cells. "Ianto? Sweetheart, how are you feeling?"

Ianto didn't answer. He pulled his knees in tighter and rested it head against them.

Gwen looked at Jack. "Why didn't it work?"

Jack was looking at the screen. "The memories. He still has them." He looked at the box. "This thing wasn't transmitting them. They were there before he found it. It just triggered them. Unburied them."

Gwen's expression was one of horror. "Then he really did it?"

"No," Jack said, standing up. "He didn't. He couldn't. Something else put them there." He looked at Gwen. "We need to find out what." He took a breath. "We need to use the mind probe."

"What? That thing almost killed Beth when we used it on her, can you imagine what it would do to a human-"

"It's the _only way_," Jack said angrily, through gritted teeth. "It's the only way we can find out where those memories came from."

Gwen just looked at him silently.

"We'll call for help," Jack said, sitting back down, bringing a hand to his brow. "I'll call for help. It'll be fine."

Gwen could only nod and turn away, her hand playing nervously with the necklace around her throat, staring at Ianto on the screen.


	3. Chapter 3

"Hello?"

"Martha Jones."

"Jack! What, no line about a nightingale this evening?"

"We need your help, Martha."

"What's wrong?"

"It's Ianto. It's hard to explain. I need someone with medical knowledge. Can you come?"

"Tomorrow. I'll be there tomorrow. All right?"

"That's fine. Thank you."

"Wait, Jack!"

"Yeah?"

"Is he okay? Ianto. He's not hurt?"

A pause.

"He'll be fine."

Click.

- - -

Jack stood outside of Ianto's cell. He was still in the corner. Still with his knees in his chest. Jack leaned against the wall opposite, his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground. "We found out what the stone was." Ianto didn't look up. He continued anyway. "It was a message. Transmitting emotion. It brought up bad memories to try and relate to the person it was transmitting to." He paused. "It unburied yours."

"They are mine, then," Ianto said, muffled by the fabric of his jeans.

"No." Jack looked at him. "You got them somewhere. This just means that the stone didn't give them to you."

Ianto was silent. Jack could feel him slipping away, into himself. He came forward to lean against the glass.

"We'll figure it out tomorrow. We'll find out where your memories came from."

"How?"

Jack paused. He looked at the floor. "The mind probe."

Ianto's eyes widened briefly, then returned to their lidded, swollen appearance. He had no other reaction.

"Martha's coming," Jack said. "She'll make sure that you're safe."

Ianto nodded.

Jack looked at him through the thick glass. The light in the cell washed his pale face out further. "Please come and sleep with me."

Ianto looked at him, eyebrows lowered, mouth open in horror.

"Just to sleep," Jack said, putting a hand against the cool glass. "I don't want you spending the night in here. You aren't a prisoner."

Ianto shook his head and buried it in his arms. "No. I'm dangerous, Jack."

"Well, you can't kill me," Jack said, with a smile he didn't feel, that didn't reach his eyes.

"I could escape."

"I'll handcuff you."

Ianto said in a thick whisper, "No."

Jack's brow creased. He looked hard at Ianto, curled so tightly in on himself. "Why?"

Ianto said nothing. He didn't look up.

Jack stared. Then it hit him. "You're punishing yourself."

"If you won't." There were tears on the edge of his voice.

"You didn't do it, Ianto. You couldn't have. This isn't you."

"I did it. I remember." Slow tears began to move down his cheeks. "Even if I didn't, I can still feel it. I can feel how good it was. So much power. So much control." He clenched and unclenched his fists. He was shaking. "I can feel my hands on their throats, in the rain, in the dark."

"Stop it."

"No!" Ianto leapt to his feet and approached the door. "What if this is really who I am, Jack? What if you're wrong? What will you do if I really did kill them?"

"You _didn't_." Jack hit the glass with a fist; it made a dull sound. "I won't have to do _anything_ because _you didn't kill anyone!"_

They stared at each other, both breathing hard, both with their eyes wide, matching determined looks on their faces, separated by inches of glass.

Ianto broke first. He took a step back and put a hand over his eyes. He fell back onto the bench. "I'm sorry," he said dully. "You're trying to help. I'm sorry."

Jack shook his head.

They were silent for a moment.

Then Jack asked, "So will you come out?"

Ianto looked at him. For a long time.

"No."

Jack's teeth snapped together in anger. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the vaults. Ianto watched him go.

He came back minutes later with a pillow under one arm and a blanket under the other. Ianto's mouth dropped open. "You're not-"

"These are for you," Jack said. He pushed the button to open the door and threw them inside, then pushed it closed again. "And yes, I am." He sat down in the corner created by the cell door and the stone wall. "I'm not leaving you down here alone with Janet."

Ianto reached forward to pick up the blanket. And smiled. The smallest smile possible on the human face, but still there. Still real.

"Thank you."

Jack smiled, too.

"No problem."

- - -

He woke up to Gwen shaking his shoulder lightly. He started, and she put a finger to her lips, then pointed to Ianto, fitfully sleeping inside of the cell, spread out on the bench with his pillow and blanket. She helped Jack to his feet and they left the vault.

"Did you stay in there with him all night?" she asked when they were in the hallway.

"And my back hates me for it."

Gwen grinned. "Old man, you are. I'm surprised he let you."

"It took some arguing."

Gwen smiled fondly.

He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"You're like a proper couple. Fights, compromises-"

"Aliens, false memories, pterodactyls."

Gwen laughed. "Works for me and Rhys."

Jack held a door open for her, and as she went by, he smiled.

- - -

Martha arrived at half past ten, wringing wet from the rain.

"Sorry I'm late," she said as Gwen helped her off with her coat. "Dead things. London traffic." She brushed herself off and looked at Jack. "All right. What's wrong?"

Jack led her over to a table where the containment box lay. He took off the lid and let her look inside. "Ianto heard this singing in the archives two days ago. It made him remember things that happened to him when he was younger. Then it pulled him back to the hub in his sleep and made him remember something that didn't actually happen."

Martha looked at him. "What did he remember?"

Jack glanced at Gwen, then looked back at Martha. "Killing three women."

Martha took a step back from the box. Jack put the lid back on. "It wasn't the stone that gave him the memories, though. They just unburied them. We need to find out how he got them in the first place. And how they were lost."

Martha nodded. "What do you need me to do, then?"

Jack looked at Gwen and nodded. She left. Jack turned back to Martha. "We're going to use a piece of alien technology that will burrow down into Ianto's consciousness to find anything hidden. It should tell us how he got the memories." He sat on the edge of the table. "The problem is, we've only ever used it on aliens. One's skin hardened to an impenetrable shield the second it came under pressure. The other – it ended badly. So we need you to tell us when we're doing any damage. To stop us if we're going to kill him."

Martha nodded, slowly, hesitantly. "What happened to the other alien?"

Gwen interrupted whatever answer Jack would have given by wheeling the equipment into view. He stood up. "Help Gwen get set up. I'll go and get Ianto.

- - -

Ianto was still asleep when Jack opened the door to the cell. He ran a hand through Ianto's hair.

Ianto jumped awake at the touch in a flail of limbs, making Jack step away in surprise.

Ianto caught himself, eyes focusing finally on Jack, breathing hard.

"Sorry," he said, sitting upright. "Bad dreams."

He'd been asleep for hours but he still looked exhausted. Jack held out his hand. "It's time. Martha's here."

Ianto took the hand and let Jack help him up. "Let's get it over with, then."

At the workstations, Martha and Gwen were just finishing the setup. Jack steered Ianto into the wheelchair, remembering with bitter irony the last time he sat there, pretending to be electrocuted. Ianto seemed to be remembering, too. He paled further.

Martha stepped forward, almost pushing Jack out of the way and dropping to be on eye level with Ianto. "Oh, Ianto you look awful." She shined a small torch in one eye, then the other.

"Good to see you too, Martha."

Martha smiled. "Least you've got your humor." But it wasn't true. Ianto looked, sounded, like he was only partly conscious. He could hardly hold himself up. Martha looked back at Jack with a question in her eyes.

He could only shrug in reply. He didn't know what was making him that way.

Only that it was probably guilt.

Martha stepped away and started tapping at a computer terminal. Ianto's vital signs and a detailed analysis of his health drew up onto the screen.

She looked to Jack. "All right. Ready."

Gwen strapped Ianto's arms down and Jack stepped forward. "Are you okay with this?"

"No." Ianto looked up at him. "But you have to do it anyway. So do it."

Jack frowned. "I'm right here, all right?"

Ianto just nodded, too nervous to speak.

He saw Jack nod to Gwen, and she started the machine.

Instantly he felt the most intense pressure he had ever experienced. It was like all of the blood and air in his body was suddenly desperately trying to escape through his skin. And then a deep pain at the very center of his brain, somewhere nonphysical and untouchable but somehow still able to hurt, still able to _burn_, and he knew he was screaming but he couldn't help it, could feel his arms straining against the straps that held him down, could feel his body twisting in the chair but only vaguely, because that pain, oh God, that pain and pressure was drilling deeper and deeper and growing, expanding, and he couldn't draw breath or think coherently or stop himself from thrashing.

He heard Martha and Gwen shouting, but Jack thundering over them, thundering over his own cries, "Who gave you the memories?"

He couldn't find it – he was looking, but it wasn't anywhere, the answer, there was just

_(rain battering metal battering his coat hard to see hard to breath but so close to her his cheek on her cheek his hand on her throat)_

He screamed, "I don't know!"

He heard Jack say "deeper" and the pain came hotter, brighter, the pressure threatening to tear him apart, his body feeling so far away but the pain like _thought_ was pain like _consciousness_ was pain –

"Where did you dump the bodies?"

Again, he looked, tried to find it, scrambled for it but couldn't reach it, it was too far down, too much rain, too dark to see it

_(slamming her to the ground kneeling next to her looking into her face was that pain was that light what was she thinking as she was dying)_

Screaming, "I can't remember!"

"Deeper."

Martha's protests, Gwen's, so far away but it came, another wave and he could feel it in his chest but not in his chest somewhere far away from him but right THERE and the _screaming_ but Jack shouting over everything,

"Who gave you the memories?"

And he reached. And caught something.

- - -

Jack, Gwen and Martha watched as Ianto sat suddenly upright in his seat, his face still horrified but no longer twisted in pain. He was breathing in whistling gasps.

He said quietly, "Leave well alone."

Jack blinked. "Where did you dump the bodies?"

"Leave well alone."

"What does that mean?" Gwen asked, staring.

"Leave well alone, leave well alone, LEAVE WELL ALONE LEAVE WELL ALONE LEAVE WELL ALONE-" He kept screaming it, over and over again, those nonsense words, without pause for breath, without blinking.

Jack yelled at Gwen, "Turn it off!"

She switched the power off and Ianto slumped back in the seat. Jack heard Martha take off running, her heels loud on the stone floor. He stood there, staring, as Gwen quickly unstrapped Ianto from the chair and caught him as he fell forward, unconscious. She turned her fierce eyes to Jack.

He looked back at her, then went after Martha.

- - -

He found her in his office, leaning over his trash bin, losing whatever breakfast she'd managed to bolt before arriving.

"You know, we do have a bathroom."

She turned on him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were more angry than he had ever seen them. A very familiar type of anger.

_She picked up a lot from the Doctor._

She stepped toward him. "You tortured him."

He shook his head. "The pain is a side-effect of the machine, it isn't meant for human consciousness-"

"Then _why would you use it?_ Why _risk_ it, Jack?"

"It wasn't a risk. We had you here to make sure-"

"To make sure his head didn't explode? Make sure his heart didn't stop? You could have given him an aneurysm, Jack! If he'd started to hemorrhage, I wouldn't have been able to help him here! He might have died on the way to the hospital! There are a thousand medical things that could have gone wrong with that amount of pressure, and I wouldn't have been able to fix any of them! Not to mention the psychological effects something like that could have."

Jack just looked at her, expressionless.

"_Why?_ Why would you do it? If the memories aren't his, why can't you just retcon him? Why can't you just make him forget that he ever remembered?" She looked at him desperately, searching for any kind of good answer, any answer that made it worth the risk.

He didn't have one for her.

"It's my job."

She stood still, stunned.

"_What?"_

"It's my job. I can't just retcon him. No matter how much I want to, I can't. Because those memories came from somewhere. From something. And whatever it is, it could be a threat. So I need to find it. I need to find out what did it, and I need to stop it from doing it to anyone else. And if I can't do that – then at least – I have to at least-" He couldn't finish. He looked away.

Martha said quietly, "You have to at least make sure that Ianto didn't really do it."

He nodded. "I know that he didn't. But he needs to know that. He needs to separate the real from the unreal. And if it was his hand that killed them, but under some kind of alien control, then he needs to know that, too. So he can stop hating himself for it. And so I can find the thing that did it."

Martha was quiet for a moment, just looking at him, standing there looking defeated.

"Sometimes I don't know whether to hate you or love you."

"Join the club. There's jackets."

She sighed and sat on the edge of his desk. "So what does he mean by 'leave well alone'?"

Jack went around the desk and started tapping at the computer terminal. "Last year, we lost two days. We all had traces of retcon in our systems, and the CCTV footage and computer work for those days had been deleted with my digital signature. There was nothing left, except for something that came up whenever I tried to think about it." He looked at her. "'Leave well alone.'" He spun the monitor around so that she could see it. On the screen was a note written by Ianto, and a corrupted file fragment, looking like a Torchwood personnel file. "I told Ianto about it, and he left this note on the system, telling the others to leave it alone. He must have installed the same mental trap, maybe unintentionally." Jack straightened up and sighed. "The lost days don't correspond to the dates that Ianto is supposed to have murdered those women. So that isn't what's hidden. But it definitely has something to do with it. If asking about the murders triggers that mental block, then whatever happened to us in those two days gave Ianto the memories."

"Is there a way to figure out what happened on the lost days?"

Jack shook his head. "No. And even if there were, I wouldn't want to. They're lost for a reason. I'm the only person that could have deleted those files. I trust my judgment."

"So you aren't going to look for what did this to him?"

"No."

She flared. "Then you just put him through all of that for no reason?"

Jack looked at her, brow creased in mild anger. "It's not like I knew that when I strapped him in, Martha."

She sighed. "Right. Sorry." She swung her legs back and forth, thinking. "What are you going to do now? Couldn't you just retcon him, since you aren't going to find out what did it anyway?"

"I can't," Jack said, and he sounded weaker than Martha had ever heard him sound. She looked up at him. "If I do that, he'll just remember again, one day. And we'll have to do this all over again." He sighed. "And he wouldn't want me to. It would be the worst kind of lying to him."

"He has to figure it out for himself."

Jack nodded.

Martha stood up and put a comforting hand on his arm. "He can do it, Jack. He's strong. He'll work it out."

Jack put his hand over Martha's, giving her a small smile, then went back out into the hub. Martha followed.

- - -

They found Gwen and Ianto in much the way Jack had left them: Gwen sitting on the floor in front of the wheelchair, Ianto's head in her lap, petting his hair in her mothering way. As Jack approached, she looked up and gripped Ianto a little tighter, frowning.

"It's all right," Jack said quietly, stooping down to take Ianto's arm and put it over his shoulder. "I'm just taking him back to the cells."

"What-" Gwen started, but Jack shook his head. His face said clearly, _Later._

He slipped one arm under Ianto's shoulders and the other under his knees and lifted him up slowly. His head dropped against Jack's neck, but otherwise he didn't stir. Jack cradled him closer and turned. Martha and Gwen watched silently as he carried Ianto away.

- - -

Ianto woke up as Jack was setting him carefully down onto the cell bench. He mumbled with his eyes still closed, "Did you just carry me in here like a newlywed?"

Jack smiled and put a hand on his forehead. "You were a little too unconscious for this to be a honeymoon."

Ianto snorted tired laughter, his eyes still closed. "Knowing you."

Jack ran his hand through Ianto's hair, much in the same way that Gwen had, but somehow entirely different. "We didn't find anything."

"I figured."

"It's up to you now. You have to figure out what's real and what isn't."

Ianto's eyes opened and he caught Jack's hand in his own. He looked up into his face. "How?"

"You've been running away from the memories ever since you got them back. You've been trying not to relive them." Jack squeezed Ianto's hand. "You need to start. You need to relive everything. Both sets of memories. You have to find something that makes one set real and one set fake. A glitch. There has to be one. Implanted memories are never perfect. Memory is too delicate."

"What if I can't find anything?"

"You'll find something."

Ianto looked up at Jack's face, his lips trembling very slightly.

"All right," he said, finally. "I'll try."

Jack stood up. Ianto released his hand.

"You'll be fine,' Jack said with certainty. "And if you need me, I'll come running."

Ianto nodded. He watched Jack leave, watched the cell door close.

Then he closed his eyes and remembered.

- - -

The rain. Walking through the rain, his hands in gloves, gun in his pocket just in case. Her heels clicking on the stone of the alley. Shadowing, in the dark, silent, hardly even breathing, eyes taking in everything, ears taking in everything, every movement, every sound, he knew all of it. And then his hand slipping over her mouth – her hands clawing at the gloves, dropping her purse and struggling against him while he laughed softly in her ear, enjoying it, enjoying it –

No, it was too hard. The other set of memories, Jack, Jack was easier, but fainter, so much fainter, washed out and sepia-toned like an old photograph.

But there. Jack. Clothes a stupid, Puritan barrier, done away with easily enough – lips against his, a laugh, hands on his skin – not in your office, not _again –_

But faded too quickly, intercut like a film with the darker things. Old alleyways, next to dumpsters, behind silent, closed-down businesses he took lives with _pressure_, such a gorgeous kind of _pressure_, his hands fitting perfectly around feminine throats –

Jack. Jack Jack Jack. Try harder, reach, find something there, something real – breath on his neck, sheets, hands gripping anything –

Back out in the rain, the rain in his eyes, the rain in his hair. Crying, screaming out there in the rain, the horror of what he had done finally catching up, but why horror, why when it had felt so good, felt so good to be squeezing the life out of someone –

NO.

Jack.

Movement in the dark, warm breath across his skin, hands, lips.

**It wasn't raining that night.**

Real, in color, surround sound, tactile:

_(a catch of breath a hand in his hair a whisper against his skin "Ianto")_

And the other memories shattered.

The rain was like someone holding a hose over a camera. Like kids playing in the garden, making it rain just on them. His hands on throats like touching wet cardboard, paper-thin, flimsy, collapsing under the slightest pressure, faded to black and white, to the tinny sound of old-time movies.

While Jack, being with Jack, came into bright focus. Real. Finally real.

Ianto threw himself upright in the cell and stumbled against the wall.

"JACK!"

Then he fell.

- - -

When they heard him call, Jack, Gwen and Martha dropped what they were doing – which admittedly wasn't much more than worrying – and ran for the vaults. Jack was there first, and he punched the button to open the door and went in, dropping to his knees and lifting Ianto up into his lap. Ianto grabbed the lapel of his coat and gave him an exhausted smile.

"I was with you," he said. "It wasn't raining. I was with you."

Jack's terrified concern melted into a huge smile. "You figured it out."

Ianto nodded against Jack's arm, then pulled himself up and kissed him.

Martha and Gwen exchanged a glance and relieved smiles in the doorway.

Then Ianto fell back, unconscious, and Martha hurried in to help.

- - -

Ianto woke up in a kind of half-dark, a pillow below his head and a blanket pulled to his chin. Someone's hand in his.

"If you carried me in here again," he murmured against the pillow, "the girls are going to think I'm one of them."

"Sorry," Jack said, and Ianto could hear, if not see, his smile.

He turned over. Jack sat in a chair by the bed. There was a book on the nightstand, opened to the middle. "Either you read very fast or I've been out a while."

"A little of both." Jack leaned over and closed it. "Martha left a few hours ago. Said you'd be fine, with a little rest, now that you aren't fighting against two sets of memories."

Ianto nodded. He looked up at the ceiling of Jack's room.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?"

He looked at him. "For believing that I wasn't a monster. Even I was willing to think it, for a while. But you never did."

Jack shook his head. "It's fine."

"We still don't know where they came from. Those memories."

"I think it's better that we don't," Jack said. "Whatever it was, you broke through it. And that's enough."

"Is it really?"

Jack leaned over and kissed him.

"For now, yes."

* * *

_**Author's Note:** Thanks for reading! I loved writing this one. If the stream-of-consciousness is a bit too confusing, I'll go back through it and make it more clear, but I think it does its job pretty well. It's a shame I chose this day to totally torture poor Ianto. Happy birthday, Ianto; hope the coffee's good in heaven, or the void, or wherever. _

_There might be a sequel for this one. Lots of room for one, right? If I can think of something great, then I will definitely write it.  
_

_Hope you liked it! For those who reviewed, thanks for that, you are delightful human beings._


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